Transportation through time.

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Monthly Archives: October 2015

The Arizona Department of Transportation researched the history of the state’s transportation system from pre-Columbian times to the present. The resulting report can be accessed online. The report was also the basis for a full-color, photo-rich book published in honor of Arizona’s 2012 centennial — Arizona Journeys: How Transportation Shaped the Grand Canyon State. To…

The financing of the transport infrastructures which would support the economic growth and the employment policy is nowadays a highly relevant question. Although these financial issues are not new, they remain relatively unexplored by the historians before the coming of the railways. From the second half of the 17th century, the logistical imperatives of the…

The failure of Takata airbags has, sadly, made most of us think more than we used to about airbag technology as a safety feature in cars. But how many of us know anything about the history of technological changes in automobiles designed to make auto occupants safer? The Atlantic.com has published an article, How Airbags are…

Jeremy Atack, Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt, has posted historical GIS transportation shape (SHP) files for the Lower 48 states from the nation’s founding through (approximately) 1911 on this site. Researchers and map enthusiasts can have a field day with these files! From Jeremy: “Each transportation mode – canals, steamboat-navigated (as opposed to navigable) rivers, and railroads – has its…